Carbon dioxide emission typology and policy implications: Evidence from machine learning

Hanjie Wang and Xiaohua Yu

China Economic Review, 2023, vol. 78, issue C

Abstract: The policy design of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission mitigation is a hotly debated topic in the context of “Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality” in China. This paper contributes to this debate by employing an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to uncover the CO2 emission typology based on the provincial emission data in China from 2000 to 2018 for a precise design of CO2 emission mitigation policy for heterogenous regional patterns. The results indicate that we can cluster the provinces into four CO2 emission patterns: the under-developed pattern, the coal-dominated pattern, the oil-dominated pattern, and the gas-dominated pattern. Notably, both the under-developed pattern and the coal-dominated pattern have a large amount of CO2 emission from fossil fuels, while the gas-dominated pattern could be regarded as the policy inclination as it relies more on low-carbon fuels. Moreover, we also reveal the transition routes of emission patterns from a dynamic perspective, which could help policymakers better understand the future trend of emission patterns in different regions. On the one hand, the CO2 emission mitigation policies could have specified priorities in different patterns, ensuring the feasibility during the process of policy implementation. On the other hand, establishing a national unified carbon trade market could facilitate efficient energy transition in China, and prevent carbon leakage cross different regions as well.

Keywords: CO2 emission; Emission typology; Machine learning; Carbon peak; Carbon neutrality; Unified National Carbon Market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X23000263
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:78:y:2023:i:c:s1043951x23000263

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2023.101941

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().